This blog often talks about risks that we fret over too much. Time to talk about one we worry about too little; the air we breath…indoors. For a number […]
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A decade ago, Chris Hedges titled his analysis of the addictive power of war War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If war truly is a force that gives […]
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America, as a private membership-based organization, had the right to discriminate against gay people by expelling them or barring […]
Have you ever walked past a monument, stopped to see what or whom it was for, and either still had no idea what or whom it was memorializing or had […]
Neuroscientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have published the first set of data which they collected by examining thin slices of a mouse’s brain to create a 3D diagram.
The neuroscience of creativity is flourishing. But will the popularity of this subject lead to better, or sloppier science?
What’s the Big Idea? As the K-12 school year starts up again in full force, it’s worth asking: are American public schools really failing? According to the measure set by […]
I was speaking at The University of Texas — Pan American not long ago and a student asked me a question that had never been asked of me in more […]
Before reading please click ‘View Entire Story’. My apologies for the length. Over at the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan wrote an article against abortion. It’s not entirely clear whether Hasan […]
Arguments on both sides of this question were aired at a thought-provoking colloquium sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College on September 21-22: “Does the President Matter? A […]
A couple years ago, the government of New York City created a program on resilience to climate change and sea level rise. Many of the steps that program laid out […]
Someday soon you may be able to create replicas of 3D objects by taking their photo and feeding the data to your at-home printer. Will that be the end of the manufacturing-based economy?
The new CNN poll has Obama leading Romney 52-45. That’s close to the margin separating the two candidates among independents. It’s also close to the distance between them when it […]
I’ll be posting another actual ATNT post tomorrow. For now, I just want to indicate other posts I’ve written recently. 1. MAKING MONSTERS [link] At my friend Martin Pribble’s blog, […]
Dear Readers, I made a mistake. In the article below, I said it would take some very high rates of growth to close the $7 trillion gap in Mitt Romney’s […]
We pay special attention to the history of an object – where it has been, who created it, what touched it – because object’s history is what really matters when it comes to its value.
So, here’s the question for today: How should we respond when people we admire make serious missteps? Just so there’s no confusion, I want to say right up front that […]
The redoubtable fashion critic Simon Doonan, author of Gay Men Don’t Get Fat,observes that a unique appearance is a political liability in the United States. Mitt Romney, he observes, is “so handsome that he runs the risk of looking too “plastic…like a TV anchor.”
Jaron Lanier: if we don’t learn to acknowledge that real people are actually creating the value online, we’re never going to learn how to create the information economy that can really create employment and self-determination.
Data-mongering is how Americans try to explain or control someone’s actions. And yet, statistics about people in general, or about some category of people, tell you nothing certain about any one individual.
The Brooklyn Book Festival took place last weekend, and I still can’t stop thinking about Mary Higgins Clark. She’s a GILF, a grandmother I’d like to “Friend,” and leave inside […]
What is the strongest motivation for space exploration today? According to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, it’s the promise of economic return.
New York, 1964. The World’s Fair is in full gear, as 50 million people make the trek to Queens to see what the future has in store. The exposition showcases […]
The multicultural joke goes like this: The Lone Ranger and Tonto find themselves in a tough spot, surrounded by hostile Native Americans. “We’d better get out of here,” the Lone […]
Over the past decade, there have been several studies suggesting potential gene variants that may be linked to IQ.
Despite predictions to the contrary, Intel has developed a new computer chip which fits more transistors into a smaller space. Computer power is still looking set to increase into the future.
A Japanese design studio has created a coordinated artificial organ system that conserves the body’s stores of water, necessitating that humans drink just 0.1 cups of water per day.
“We see on the basis of what we believe, not the other way around,” Errol Morris told Big Think in a recent interview. In other words, our relationship to the truth is never neutral nor “value-free.”
Rapid cost reduction, or demonitization, has led to breathtaking innovation in the field of unmanned air vehicles (or UAVs), and UAV advocates see the FAA issuing personal and commercial licenses by 2015.
Does democracy require universal suffrage? Yes, I think so. So does the Supreme Court. Economist Bryan Caplan isn’t so sure. A few years ago Caplan identified several pernicious biases individuals […]